The washing machine with integrated AI broke my brain. This must be the most useless thing I’ve ever encountered in my entire life.

I sure do! Just last night I woke up from a dream in which my downstairs neighbors were yelling only to discover they were actually yelling.

Real question is, how can I uninstall Zuckerberg…

That’s a neat parallel, we’ve also started using it as a sort of covert euphemism for “bribe,” but it’s pretty much only when discussing political contexts (go figure…)!:))

Yyyep… I sure wanted to think the XXIst Century would look different, but humans gonna hume, I guess.

I mean, other than improving education just enough to bring workers up to speed with industry requirements, the Powers That Be haven’t really changed things around. Those who own rule, the rest of us are just serfs…

From what I can remember (and I may be wrong, it’s been aeons since then), there was a time when Democracy failed and a massive orange prick got elected as head of state for one of the most powerful nations on the planet.

Fun times, those were!

In Ye Olden Days, minor Lords used to pay tribute to anyone who took up the crown/took over the lands, to get on their good side. That’s actually where the Romanian word for “tip” (bacșiș) comes from, it’s what they called tribute payments to the Ottoman Empire.

Why should this be any different? I mean, it’s Trump…

I miss the lockdowns, life was easier back then… Now the big picture just looks like a planet-wide dumpster fire…

Dunno about OP, but I, for one, am not.

Well, you can’t really do that when it’s expressed in written form as long as it’s not part of a grander “manifesto” of sorts. Or better put, as long as it’s not grounded in a context.

This can only be solved by slapping as much nuance as you possibly can on everything you write, make it incontrovertible in its clarity.

But if you’re not in the mood for an adjoining essay whenever you want to post a one-liner (seriously not being snarky about this, I completely understand the feeling of utter tedium when having to explain the same damned thing for the twelfth time), you can always monitor the reaction then provide clarification. Once you’ve done that, you really don’t need to engage any further.

And the most important aspect is to never forget that this is the internet. Some people are in it just to stir up shit, and that’s a game you win by not playing.

Seriously! The easiest way to defeat them is to remove the value they seek. And what better way to remove the value of a good in Capitalism than to start giving it away for free?

Who cares if it’s messy or embarrassing? That sounds like 60% of my day as a biological entity.

This truly is a new age of Enlightenment for humanity!

Well, you’re off to a good start! Just need “uck” to go with that F and you’re golden!

Joke aside, this may be one of those situations where Corpspeak would just serve to make it worse, either by rendering your message inert, or by generating long-term tension. And, believe me, that tension gets really suffocating really fast.

I think your best bet at this point would be to readjust your view and approach with this coworker. My aunt told me a secret which helped me a lot in theatre, but I’ve learnt it also applies in pretty much every other situation: “if they won’t be your partner on stage, then let them be furniture.”

You have the immense advantage of knowing what to expect from them, which is essentially nothing at this point. I’d say the best response is to offer the exact same in return - if they ever need something from you, dodge, postpone and obfuscate. Fuck’em. Not worth wasting your energy on this situation, it only leads to stomach ulcers.

I almost never do. It’s actually a bit weird, I tend to ramble more in writing than I ever would while speaking and usually end up with mini-essays even for relatively straightforward ideas.

This is two-pronged, partly because I enjoy writing and expressing myself through it more than I do speaking, but it’s mostly because I’m obsessive about conveying nuances with as much precision as I can, especially in a medium as restrictive to conveyance as writing is (thinking about not having non-verbal and other purely contextual cues at my disposal).

It’s not like I intentionally bring out the expensive words just to flaunt my vocabulary (I even have issues with being perceived as pretentious), it’s just that some things simply require the extra precision when expressing their full complexity.

P.S.: Jesus Christ…

They’re not even trying… It’s obvious this has been a strategy and not a bug, and the ““apology””/excuse sounds like a boilerplate justification from someone who assumes everyone but them is an idiot.

And, realistically speaking, there’s no reason for them to care in the first place. It’s not like everyone’s stopped using Facebook so far for any of their shady shit, and they’ve pulled FAR worse shit than bot accounts.

Everyone now understands the limits and they’ll take full advantage of the buffer before hitting said limit - be less moronic than Musk and you’re golden. It’s really not that high of a bar for them.

Edit, to dispel any potential misunderstanding: I’m not defending them with my last statement, that’s just how it is! If anything, it is our, the consumers’, fault for putting up with this in the first place!

Yep… A Sock Puppeteer’s wet dream…

I wholeheartedly believe nothing is lost yet! We’re still around, we’re still full-on “seditious” (from the perspective of Big Bucks McOildrill), we can do this!

But, yes, we do need an Underground Railroad type network for now…

Right?! It’d be, like, Foundation levels of precog chess! I mean, he did star in the first Butterfly Effect, maybe that unlocked his potential!

It’s not young-you’s fault, they had us all hooked on that potential. And it 100% had and still has that potential, it’s just that the wrong people are calling the shots.

Tell you what, I’ll go back with you and we can punch the ones who ruined the internet!

This just in, Billionaires like money more than they do regressive morons! The entire world is aghast!

In all seriousness, I had a brief moment of depersonalisation when I looked at humanity from a distance, and I didn’t understand a damned thing about what’s going on. I mean, I get what’s happening, but… Like… what the fuck is even happening, what even is this, are they for real?! Did they expect something else to happen?!

Is this Punk’d, are we getting Punk’d? Mfw Trump turns out to be Ashton Kutcher wearing a Total Recall mask…